ISPA: September mattress unit sales jump 3.6%, or maybe 7.6%
Whatever gain is, it reverses months of declines
David Perry -- Kids Today, 11/9/2009 10:43:00 AM
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The mattress industry reversed months of unit declines in September, posting a gain of either 3.6% or 7.6%, according to the International Sleep Products Assn.
ISPA issued two sets of figures for its September Bedding Barometer, catching industry members by surprise.
The featured set of statistics in the Bedding Barometer showed bedding units with a surprising 7.6% gain in September, with dollars down by 2.3%. ISPA said those figures “may be influenced by distribution changes affecting one or more participating companies” — an explanation that seemed to raise more questions than it answered.
ISPA also included a note with its September Bedding Barometer report stating that if data from those particular companies was excluded, the September unit increase would be approximately 3.6%, while the dollar volume would be down by about 3.5%.
Questions from the industry led ISPA to later issue a “clarification of ISPA’s September 2009 Bedding Barometer.” In that statement, ISPA said that “the September data reflected certain anomalies regarding data for one or more of the companies that would distort the year-on-year comparisons, and diminish the representativeness of the Barometer as a reflection of the market as a whole.”
Along with that explanation, ISPA released tables that exclude data for the company or companies whose data contains anomalies. According to those tables:
+ Units are down 13.3% from January through September, with dollar sales down 14.6%.
+ The innerspring mattress segment continues to gain share in units and dollars. Innerspring mattress units are down 11.8% this year, but specialty sleep mattress units are down by 18.1%. The dollar value of innerspring mattress shipments is off 12% this year, but specialty sleep mattress dollars are down by 21.8%.
+ The average unit price for innerspring mattresses is flat through the first nine months of the year, while the average unit price of specialty sleep mattresses has declined by 4.6%.
The Bedding Barometer reports reflect a snapshot of industry performance by a sample of 18 bedding producers, representing about 45.5% of the unit value of the total industry and about 56.3% of the dollar value of total industry shipments, according to ISPA.
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